The other night I crossed 150 hours of listening in Scribelate. Even though the listening time report doesn't count time spent on vocabulary reviews, journal writing, or reading stories in "Story Time," it still feels like an accomplishment. The reality of language acquisition is that it takes a lot of time, and there are a lot of ups and downs along the journey. Since my last entry, I've gone through periods of "I am making zero progress" to "I think I'm actually getting it" — sometimes in the same day, but sometimes the frustration just sets in and lingers for a while.
One of the things that brought me out of the frustration was recognizing words from different podcasts and videos. I really like the "Speak Japanese Naturally" channel. Fumi, who narrates all the videos on that channel, speaks slowly and repeats herself a lot, which helps the words sink in and stick in your memory. The videos are always interesting — in a typical one, she walks through a train station or a park somewhere in Japan, talking about what she sees and what she's doing. They're "slice of life" style videos. After listening to several of them multiple times, I've recently branched out to other channels, and I've started recognizing a lot of the words I first picked up from "Speak Japanese Naturally." Hearing the same words used in different contexts — and actually understanding them — is pretty cool.
In a previous post, I shared a chart that listed 150 hours as a kind of magic number for reaching a minimal level of N5. Looking back at that chart, the N5 level actually spans anywhere from 150–600 hours, and if you're coming from a non-kanji-based language, you can expect it to take at least 350 hours. I think there's a mental trap in thinking too much about JLPT levels or CEFR fluency levels — you'll progress at the speed you progress. If you want to learn faster, do more Scribelating; if you're getting burned out, ease back. It's a long journey, and you won't get there by sprinting.